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Space-Time Approach to Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics

Richard Phillips Feynman
- 01 Apr 1948 - 
- Vol. 20, Iss: 2, pp 367-387
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TLDR
In this paper, the authors formulated non-relativistic quantum mechanics in a different way and showed that the probability of an event which can happen in several different ways is the absolute square of a sum of complex contributions, one from each alternative way.
Abstract
Non-relativistic quantum mechanics is formulated here in a different way. It is, however, mathematically equivalent to the familiar formulation. In quantum mechanics the probability of an event which can happen in several different ways is the absolute square of a sum of complex contributions, one from each alternative way. The probability that a particle will be found to have a path x(t) lying somewhere within a region of space time is the square of a sum of contributions, one from each path in the region. The contribution from a single path is postulated to be an exponential whose (imaginary) phase is the classical action (in units of ℏ) for the path in question. The total contribution from all paths reaching x, t from the past is the wave function ψ(x, t). This is shown to satisfy Schroedinger's equation. The relation to matrix and operator algebra is discussed. Applications are indicated, in particular to eliminate the coordinates of the field oscillators from the equations of quantum electrodynamics.

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The Feynman propagator from a single path.

TL;DR: It is shown that it is possible to construct the Feynman propagator for a free particle in one dimension, without quantization, from a single continuous space-time path.
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The evaluation of transformation functions by means of the Feynman path integral

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Small Matrix Path Integral with Extended Memory.

TL;DR: The SMatPI methodology is extended to account for residual memory that exceeds the entanglement length without an increase in computational effort.
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Displacement operator formalism for renormalization and gauge dependence to all orders

TL;DR: In this paper, the displacement operator formalism was proposed for determining the renormalization of Green functions to all orders in perturbation theory, which is called the D formalism.